“I didn’t realize you had work on weekends…. I’ll clear my whole schedule next weekend.”
“Your schedule? Ha. What schedule could you possibly have.”
“……I made plans to have lunch with a friend.”
“I don’t think you quite understand the priority level of the work you’ve taken on.”
Yeon Haejeong looked down at him with an expression of pure disbelief, but all Munyeong’s eyes could find was the cat sitting on his chest. Every time Yeon Haejeong made some baffled remark, the cat’s face bobbed up and down with the movement. The shirt really was too small.
“Do you not know what your priorities are right now?”
“…But I already cancelled on them last time. Could you let it go just for today.”
“No.”
“Then would you like to… come along?”
“What?”
“It’s just lunch. You need to eat too. Since you have to have a meal anyway, we could eat together and then go from there….”
“Ha. Lunch? You and me?”
Yeon Haejeong’s face went a full degree more incredulous, hands lifting in exaggerated shock. Munyeong watched the theatrical gesture with a blank expression. You dare suggest eating with me? Muttering lines that sounded ripped straight from a drama’s insufferable chaebol heir, Yeon Haejeong kept breaking into hollow, disbelieving laughs to himself.
“…If it makes you uncomfortable, you don’t have to come. You said you needed to be present for the work…. I just thought if it wasn’t urgent, maybe we could eat first before heading out. That’s all I meant.”
“Ha. I said I needed to be present for the work? When did I say that?”
Munyeong, the opposite of his agitated counterpart, quietly pressed his lips together. No matter what he said, the other person came back with some incredulous rebuttal, and there was nothing left to say. It simply meant the whole situation was unsatisfactory to him. Munyeong was trying to figure out how to reason with someone being obstinate for obstinacy’s sake — while across from him, the running commentary continued without pause or answer: when did I say you had to be there for the work, it’s your job so of course you do it, fine, if lunch has to happen that way I’ll come along, but who even is this friend. The muttering just kept going with no expectation of a response.
That was when it happened. From just beyond the front door behind him, the loud mechanical beeping of a door lock being entered rang out. Both sets of eyes turned toward the sound at once.
“Hyung, I’m here!”
Shin Juho came strolling in like he owned the place, carrying a convenience store plastic bag stuffed with all sorts of things. He kicked his shoes off carelessly as he stepped inside — then pulled up short, visibly freezing at the sight of Yeon Haejeong standing squarely a few steps away.
“…Who are you?”
Shin Juho glanced around the room for a moment, wondering if he’d walked into the wrong apartment.
“Who are you.”
Yeon Haejeong shot back at the suddenly appearing Shin Juho with a thoroughly unimpressed expression.
“Hey, I asked first.”
Shin Juho stared at Yeon Haejeong with an affronted look, bristling at the immediate informal speech.
“You know who I—”
“He’s — he’s a friend.”
It was Munyeong who cut off Yeon Haejeong’s arrogant reply. Munyeong, who hadn’t expected Shin Juho to come straight to the apartment, shot a quick, flustered glance at Yeon Haejeong.
“A friend?”
Yeon Haejeong repeated the word with visible displeasure, and Munyeong sent him an apologetic look in silent appeal. He would rather not have Shin Juho know who Yeon Haejeong actually was. Because if he found out there was a Senior Managing Director of a major conglomerate in his apartment right now, the questions would never stop.
“A friend?”
Shin Juho echoed the same word. He stared at Munyeong with an expression that said he wasn’t buying it for a second.
“Hey. Since when do you have any friends besides me?”
The sheer shock packed into those words said everything. It wasn’t a surprising reaction. As Shin Juho said, Munyeong had essentially no friends or acquaintances he’d ever bring home.
“…We ran into each other by chance. We went to the same… school.”
Munyeong was telling a lie that wasn’t quite a lie, and as he said it he glanced briefly, involuntarily, at Yeon Haejeong. Saying they went to the same school didn’t mean he expected Yeon Haejeong to remember him — but memory was a strange thing, capable of being woken by even a single passing frame, and that alone was enough to make him uneasy. But contrary to his worry, Yeon Haejeong seemed far less concerned with the mention of school and far more visibly irritated about being referred to as a “friend.” Munyeong felt relief, and alongside it, something faintly bitter. Not enough to remember anything. So that’s how little my existence meant to him. The thought surfaced, just a little.
“Schoolmates?”
Shin Juho still looked unconvinced, eyes sliding over Yeon Haejeong skeptically. Then his gaze landed squarely on the cat sitting on Yeon Haejeong’s chest and stopped dead.
“Hey! That’s mine!”
“What. It’s his?!”
The childish outburst from two grown men built like mountains left Munyeong momentarily speechless.
“…I lent it to him for a bit. He didn’t have any clothes.”
“Why doesn’t he have clothes. Is he broke?”
“Broke? Are you out of your mind? Ha, broke? Me?”
Yeon Haejeong’s lip corners trembled with barely contained outrage, his hand flying to his mouth as if he’d been dealt a tremendous insult. Munyeong refused to get swept up in the chaos and replied calmly.
“That’s not it — he slept here last night….”
“Then why is he sleeping at someone else’s place. What kind of reason is ‘we happened to run into each other in school’ to randomly bring someone home and put them up for the night?”
Shin Juho shot another look at Yeon Haejeong. He had a tendency to be overprotective of Munyeong sometimes — less overprotective, really, and more like someone constantly on guard against anyone getting too easy a foothold in Munyeong’s soft spots.
“It’s just that, he doesn’t yet….”
Munyeong tried to answer as casually as he could, but his words suddenly stalled. He glanced carefully at Yeon Haejeong, who seemed mildly disoriented by the whole situation, and continued quietly.
“He doesn’t have a place to stay yet, so I let him stay just one night.”
That wasn’t a lie either. The truth was, Yeon Haejeong had no current residence, and bringing him here really had been unavoidable.
“He doesn’t have a place to stay?”
Shin Juho let the guard drop a fraction from his expression, and with something almost like sympathy creeping into his eyes, he glanced over at Yeon Haejeong briefly before whispering to Munyeong.
“…Is he from the same facility as us?”
He scratched his cheek with a tentative look as he asked. That’s absurd. Yeon Haejeong is a different breed of human from the very beginning.
Just as Munyeong was about to shake his head in firm denial, Yeon Haejeong’s voice cut in flatly.
“I’ve lived a long life but being treated like a vagrant is a first.”
Yeon Haejeong let out a dazed, deflated sigh. Munyeong was equally flustered. He was spinning half-lies tangled up with truth, and the whole time Yeon Haejeong’s reaction loomed over him until his skin prickled. Munyeong looked at Yeon Haejeong with genuine desperation. He didn’t want to reveal Yeon Haejeong’s identity to Shin Juho right now. Because Shin Juho knew that name — Yeon Haejeong, all three syllables. Shin Juho was the only person who knew about what happened back then.
“No permanent address, borrowing someone’s clothes — sounds like a vagrant to me.”
“Ha, what is even happening right now.”
“S — stop it. Juho, don’t. Why do you have to talk like that.”
Munyeong grabbed Shin Juho’s arm urgently and tried to settle things down with a calm voice. He knew Yeon Haejeong’s temper better than anyone, and at this rate it felt like only a matter of time before this escalated into a real fight.
“He’s the one talking out of line.”
“You were rude to him too, right when you met him. Don’t do that. He’s my fr — my friend.”
“Hey, since when do you have friends. Honestly.”
Shin Juho still couldn’t seem to believe it, bottom lip jutting out as he grumbled. Yeon Haejeong watched the two of them, clearly close in a way that irritated him, and let out a derisive little laugh. From the moment Shin Juho had punched in the door code and barged in like he lived there, to the way he was acting like Munyeong’s personal guardian — it all grated on Yeon Haejeong’s nerves in a way that felt almost physical. Like a thorn being slowly dragged down his throat. And then the sight of Munyeong gripping Shin Juho’s arm and calling his name with that familiar ease — the closeness between them was impossible to miss. A violent, sudden aversion surged through him. It was enough to make his stomach roll, and the feeling clawed up so sharply that his jaw clenched hard as he forced it back down.
“Fine, let’s just go. I’m hungry.”
Shin Juho grumbled and shot one last look past Munyeong’s shoulder at Yeon Haejeong. If he followed his instincts, he’d have already shoved that arrogant slab of muscle face-first into the kitchen sink. Does he know who he’s talking to. Does he know who I am. Yeon Haejeong bit down hard on his lower lip and turned his gaze to the neat crown of Munyeong’s bowed head. That was the problem, right there. Munyeong was telling lies — out-of-character, almost reckless lies — to keep his closest friend from knowing who Yeon Haejeong really was.
“Alright. Give me a minute outside and I’ll be right out.”
“Come out together.”
“I just… need to say something to my fr — my friend. Go ahead without me. Okay?”
At the gentle, measured tone, Shin Juho finally gave in, unhappy about it, and reached for the door handle.
“…Hurry up.”
As Shin Juho gave one last distrustful look at Yeon Haejeong on his way out, one side of Yeon Haejeong’s cheek twitched. This little—… Before the rough words could come flying out, Munyeong swiftly ushered Shin Juho out the door and shut it with a firm click. Finally alone, the tension flooded back in. Munyeong drew a steadying breath and looked carefully up at Yeon Haejeong.
“…I — I’m sorry.”
And immediately bent at the waist in a full ninety-degree bow. He understood exactly how much impropriety had just taken place. Just as Yeon Haejeong had said — Im Munyeong knew his place, and that meant he couldn’t pretend not to know how wrong all of this had gone.
“…He’s a close friend of mine. His way of speaking is a bit rough. I’m sorry.”
Munyeong kept his back bent as he continued his apology.
“And I’m sorry for — for calling you a friend. It’s just that if he found out you were someone that im — important, things would get too n — noisy. It wasn’t my intention to….”
“Incredibly presumptuous of you.”
